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Gays: Natured or Nurtured? Does It Matter? February 23, 2009 By Nichole
Rogers Sausage and
cheese kolaches are a perfect complement to our Sunday morning debating
rituals, mainly because they allot me only a small window of interjection
time between bites. Someone says, “Barack Obama is going to
be a terrible president.” I'm unable to respond to this claim
because I'm savoring the warmth and comfort of the sausage.
Every new topic seems to blossom at the exact moment of my next
bite, so whenever I do eventually find my way into the conversation,
I come across as a sage or an ancient oracle instead of soap-box-standing-know-it-all. A man wearing
a tan suit with a red, paisley-print tie saunters about the room,
poking into various conversations. “I don't care what anyone says.
Gays are not born that way,” he whispers over his Styrofoam cup
of coffee as the steam from his cup encircles his asymmetrical face.
I shift uncomfortably in my seat and, naturally, am trying to ingest
the impossible-to-swallow kolache. No one responds to Paisley
Man. Everyone, instead, glances sideways and attempts to avoid
eye contact with him. When I finally manage to swallow, the
topic becomes irrelevant and people are laughing again. I'm upset because
I just missed the opportunity to wow people with my insight, but
what bothers me more is that my friends are going to leave this
place without giving any consideration to Paisley's statement.
I've heard those types of statements all of my life--that gay people
aren't born that way and that they choose to be gay. I have
subscribed to and accepted this notion for as long as I can remember.
And I've never once had a problem with it until now. I suppose
it has something to do with the way the steam from Paisley's cup
mirrors his swagger across the room. God places homosexuals,
or the effeminate, into the same category as other sinners: “Know
ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,
nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves,
nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall
inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 6:9-10). We're probably
not going to get into a debate about whether homosexuality is a
sin, and we might all agree that it's something that God doesn't
like. But is it possible that gays are born that way?
A few years
ago, I was talking to a guy who was telling me about his friend
that happens to be gay. He said, “John Doe is just not attracted
to women. Is God going to judge him for that?” I didn't
have a good answer for him that day because he raised a good point.
In support of his theory, I knew for a fact that there were boys
out there who were born with less testosterone than other boys,
which oftentimes resulted in homosexuality in adulthood. When
I thought about this, I became quite troubled because it didn't
seem fair that they would be held accountable for being gay, something
that was clearly out of their control. Then I looked
more closely at the aforementioned scripture and considered some
of the other sins in that same category, such as alcoholism.
Babies have the potential to become alcoholics if they are the offspring
of an alcoholic, not only because they are in an alcoholic environment,
but because they can be predisposed to alcoholism at birth through
the blood. So if the baby grows into a young woman who constantly
craves beer, is God going to hold her accountable for those desires?
Before I answer that, I must first pose the question, “What separates
an alcoholic from a person who is clean?” The answer is simple:
one drinks, and one does not. The sin is not the craving;
the sin is the doing. So the woman would not be held accountable
by God unless she actually commits the sin of getting drunk.
Some women have
a natural tendency to desire to have relationships with lots and
lots of men. They could respond to this predisposition by
having sex on a consistent basis, which would be a sin, or they
could make a vow to remain pure until marriage. God would
never hold them accountable for that desire. Instead, he would
reward their purity. The same principle
can be applied to homosexuals. The sin is not the desire to
have an intimate relationship with an individual of the same sex;
the sin is actually having that intimate relationship. Some may not
support the idea that people can be born gay, but most would agree
that everyone has innate characteristics, traits that are not learned
from parents. It is important to note how an adopted child
oftentimes behaves quite differently than the parents of the home
she was raised in. If we can have a genetic predisposition,
God is not going to judge us for having that tendency. But
more importantly, He isn't going to let us use that fact as a copout,
either. Instead, He is going to offer us a way out; it's called
being born again. Being born again would be unnecessary if
human beings weren't born into sin. Being born again helps
us to shed our old habits and develop new, godlier ones. If I am ever
in a situation where someone in a paisley-print tie suggests that
gays are not born that way, I can swallow my kolache with ease and
tell him that the issue of being born that way is not even the issue
and that we don't have to debate about that. Instead of accusing
a homosexual of being wrong about his own feelings, we can tell
him that he can be born again, which seems like a better approach
to me. © 2009, Nichole
Rogers --------- Nichole Rogers teaches English at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. In her spare time, she enjoys dragging her basset hound behind her bicycle. And when she isn't mistreating her dog or her students, she inflicts pain on herself by tackling unrealistic writing tasks. |
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